The Vig

Chapter Nineteen

The picture of Eddie was still on Frannie’s dresser. She got home from work and, changing into a sweatshirt and some jeans, noticed for the first time that things weren’t fitting the same. She reached for a dab of perfume and saw the photograph of Eddie.

She stopped, her hand still outstretched. Something curled up inside her. Eddie had been caught climbing up into a friend’s pickup down by Dune Beach. One leg was up on the tailgate and he’d just been turning around to answer as Frannie had yelled something at him. He was smiling his two-hundred-watt smile and his hair was blown every which way, his jacket collar turned up. She’d enlarged the picture to eight by ten and it hadn’t been perfectly focused, so there was a graininess to it that for some reason added to its immediacy.

Forgetting the perfume, she watched her hand go to the frame, and she brought the picture back to the bed, where she sat holding it on her lap.

Eddie looked about eighteen in the picture, impossibly young. She closed her eyes.

It was hard to imagine that they’d been the same age. Eddie now stopped forever only eight months older than the photograph. Frannie felt she’d aged a lifetime.

But the pregnancy kept things in real time. The baby, Eddie’s baby, growing inside her so slowly that it had hardly changed her yet.

There he was-her man-waving back to her. Daring to claim back a little space, charming her so she’d let him back in.

The grief over Eddie’s death had affected her differently than she’d have thought. The only way she found she could cope without crying all the time was to put him, put their life together, out of her mind. Actively not to remember how it had been, how they’d been together. Move on. Look ahead.

Or, the few times she’d let down, allowed his memory back into her mind, the anger would overtake her. Why did he have to go meddle in things that weren’t his business? She thought she’d loved his idealism. But that’s what had gotten him killed, and she tried to convince herself that she even hated him for being that way, because it was what took him away from her. Why did she have to have met him in the first place? It wasn’t fair.

Eddie’s smile didn’t fade, didn’t change. It was grainy, like an old photograph, getting older every day. Smiling, charming, kidding her. I’m still here, Frannie. Can’t deny it forever. I’ll bet the kid winds up looking like me.

A tear fell on the glass that covered the picture.

The kid.

One hand held the frame. The other pressed itself-flat against her belly, somehow had worked its way under the sweatshirt.

God, Eddie, she thought. Come on, this isn’t fair.

What isn’t fair? he said. That I’m in you? That all this moving ahead and looking forward and getting together with Diz… that’s okay. I realize I’m gone… is just setting yourself up for the fall later. You’ve got to find a real place to put me. I was your husband. I’m the father of that little person in there. Don’t hide me. Don’t shut me out. I don’t deserve that. If it’s painful I’m sorry, but I miss you, too. Don’t you think I wish I could be there?

“Yes, I do.”

Well, then?

Hardy came and sat next to her where she lay on the top of the bed, the picture of Eddie Cochran face down on her stomach.

Her hair was spread out behind her on the pillow, the face slightly puffed.

“What?” he said.

“It’s just too soon.”

“I know it is. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

She moved the picture of Eddie to the floor, put her hand on his thigh, curled onto her side against him. He rubbed her back inside the sweatshirt.

“You are the only male friend I have, Dismas.”

“I am that.”

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’ve done with Eddie.”

Hardy patted her stomach. “Eddie’s here.”

“That’s what I mean. I’m not just lonely.” She revised that. “I’m not even lonely. I’m trying to find Eddie and that’s not fair. To you.”

“Move over,” Hardy said.

She lay, one leg over him, her head in the hollow of his arm, a hand between the buttons of his shirt.

“Because something in me loves you,” she said. “A lot.”

“But there’s the other stuff.”

“There is.”

He blew a breath out at the ceiling. “It’s pretty natural. You’re nesting. You want a man around. You trust me, and I show up needing a place to stay. It’s a neat little dream.”

“It’s more than that, too.”

Hardy turned onto his side and undid the button on her jeans, the zipper.

“They finally feel a little tight.”

She bit at his lower lip, flicked her tongue against the tip of his. His hand, down inside her pants, pressed against her.

“See, this is real too,” she said. “This part.”

The kiss, Frannie undoing his pants, freeing him. Another kiss, deep and slow, then more getting out of clothes and he was entering her, breathing her in, mouths together, bodies close and hard pressed, pushing but not moving, her legs wrapping him, holding him as far in as he could get.

The house was cold. Walking down the long hallway, he checked the thermostat and saw it was at 58 degrees. By the time he got to the kitchen, six steps later, he heard the creaks in the responding furnace. In his bedroom he realized he hadn’t fed the fish in several days. Bad. He shook some food over the surface and they didn’t wait for him to tap the glass.

“Sorry, guys.”

He raised the blackout curtain in front of the one window in his office and looked back toward downtown, out at the twinkling lights. He could see the very tip of what the previous week had seemed the evil Pyramid presiding, like the triangular cyclops eye on the dollar bill, over the shadowy line of Jackson Heights. Leaning out, off to his right, the once spectral Sutro Tower, now vaguely benign, thrust its fingers toward some high clouds. The moon was up, nearly full.

He wondered at the change in his perception of things. He listened to his house creaking as the warmth spread in the pipes. The sound wasn’t ominous.

After the coal fire was going well, after the heat had really kicked in, after he’d gone through all his mail (except for one postcard), sitting in the pool of light cast by the green-shaded brass lamp on his desk, he switched on the room’s main lights and grabbed his darts from the board next to the fireplace.

These were his office darts, the same type of custom 20-gram tungsten beauties he carried with him at almost all times. He hadn’t thrown since he’d left the house, but in his first round, shooting for the bull, he hit two and the last one thokked low in the “ 20.”

He picked up the postcard. Hong Kong by night.

His ex-wife.

Carrying the card with him, he went back out through his bedroom to the kitchen. He kept no hard liquor in the house, but there were four bottles of Anchor Steam in the rack on the refrigerator door. He found some frozen chicken breasts and in the cupboard a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of green beans. He put the breasts in his heavy black all-purpose cast-iron pan, poured the green beans and soup over them, added a little beer, covered the whole thing and turned the heat on low. Jane was appalled at his home cooking.

Frannie had made him every meal at her house.

At the kitchen table, bottle of beer in hand, he read the back of the postcard. Where was he? Would he be home to get this? Well, she guessed she’d find out next week. It wasn’t exactly a game, but neither was it very serious.

That was Jane. Maybe it was serious, but she just wouldn’t acknowledge that anymore. Maybe, with her marriage to him and then the second one-the rebound-that had lasted less than two months, she could only let things get so serious and then pull back. When their son, Michael, had died, he had to remember, she’d gone through it too.

Sometimes it felt like it had only been him, but that hadn’t been because Jane wasn’t there. It was because he was blind to anything else.

Give her a break, Diz.

He was starting to smell the food. He got up and made sure it wasn’t burning, sticking on the bottom, and turned down the heat a little. He opened another beer.

Well, what was there to be so serious about, anyway? She was good at her job and liked it. She liked him, too. At least that. She knew who she was. He thought, with a pang, and though it had never come up, that she was still faithful to him.

It wasn’t just that he’d slept with Frannie. Frannie had told him tonight, before and after they’d made love, that she needed, she felt they both needed, more time. He ought to go home.

And he’d wanted to go home. Not to get away from Frannie. Not to figure anything out. Just to be home. What the hell did that mean? That he didn’t love Frannie? Or Jane?

The difference with Frannie was that she let him see she needed him. Maybe not for everything, maybe now only for some physical comfort, some familiar warmth, but the door was open. Jane might love him, but he didn’t feel like she needed anybody anymore.

So what was it with the Hardy monster? Did he just need to be needed? Well, if there wasn’t some need, how real could it be? Okay, but how badly would Frannie just need a father for her baby, not necessarily Dismas Hardy? It would be bad luck to get that part confused.

And when he and Jane had first gotten back together, there had been some serious voltage. Okay, there had always been the attraction-that was still there-but maybe Jane’s need at that time was to lay to rest the ghosts of their failed marriage, to prove that it really had been their son Michael’s death that had destroyed her man, Dismas, and not some failing in her.

Now, that done, the point made, it was time to coast.

The problem was that until a few months ago, until he’d gotten back with Jane, Hardy had coasted for the better part of a decade. He was coasted out. Now he was in gear, ready to roll.

He thought about having a third beer, decided what the hell, and filled a plate with the Chicken McHardy. It tasted great.

Frank Batiste had the only real office, with a door, in Homicide. Now he sat at his desk, the door open a crack, and for the first time in what seemed months felt some measure of satisfaction in his position, in the department, in the way things were shaking down. For once, he thought, the good guys might be getting a break.

The word on the dropped charges in the Valenti and Raines investigation had spread through the ranks-guys calling each other at home. Frank had personally called both men to tell them they were reinstated with back pay effective immediately.

At Clarence Raines’s suggestion he did something else that was as much the source of his satisfaction as anything else. He’d gone down to Judge Lyons and explained the mutual exclusivity of the Raines/Valenti and Treadwell investigations and requested a warrant right now on Treadwell.

Which he got and served as Treadwell sat flush-faced and shaken in Art Drysdale’s office. Treadwell’s lawyer had had a shit-fit, which did Batiste’s soul some good, and the bare fact was that now, at 9:30 P.M., Fred Treadwell was in the can on his double-murder rap, at least until the morning when bail would probably be set.

Batiste’s prompt move on Treadwell had also gotten out to his squad, and they had been returning to the office in dribs and drabs, catching up on things, getting the further notice that Batiste was personally okaying the overtime they needed to serve subpoenas, write their reports, do their work. If he lost his job over that, so be it. You couldn’t run this bunch of guys like a kindergarten without the risk of losing them. And if he lost these handpicked pros, then his own numbers, and eventually his job, would also go to hell.

So he sat enjoying the hum of men working-day guys in at night, bullshitting, getting coffee, picking up mail and paperwork. He was soaring on adrenaline-getting the warrant and arresting Treadwell, making some real management decisions-and was taking the opportunity to write it up for Chief Rigby. Sometime in the next week, he was confident the City and County would find some way to clear the money for the overtime. Or they wouldn’t find it in the budget and they’d have to borrow from another pot. Batiste thought even the most fuzzy-headed bleeding hearts among the supervisors might realize that taking killers off the street should be a priority item for a police department.

Still, homicide inspector wasn’t a punch-in job and it was plain stupid to act like it could be. Of course, the powers that be in this loony-tune city might still kick his ass over it.

“Fuck it,” he said.

“Fuck what?”

Abe Glitsky was back, standing in the doorway, not looking very sick. Batiste had no intention of mentioning it. “Oh, I don’t know, take your pick. The supervisors, Rigby and his chicken patrol.” He put the tip of his pen in his mouth. “Come to think of it, I ought to mention that. They got money for that, they can pay some overtime.”

“Right on,” Abe said, pulling a chair out from the wall. “Listen, Frank, I want you to know, I’ve sent in that application to L.A.”

The lieutenant put his pen down. “Don’t do that.”

Glitsky shifted in the chair. “It’s already done.”

“Well, I mean don’t go. What’re you gonna do there in L.A.?”

“What am I doing here?”

“You know what you’re doing here. We need you here.”

Glitsky smiled, the scar a tight white line through his lips. Batiste held up a hand. “That’s not b.s., Abe. I don’t spout the line, you know that. And I need you here.”

“Thanks, Frank, that’s nice to hear. But if you get a call for a reference, give them some kind words, would you?”

He nodded. “Of course I’ll do that. But look, why don’t you take a few days off, think about it. Maybe you’re just having a little burnout. Take a vacation.”

“I took today off and thought about it, Frank. I’m not burned out. I still want to be a cop. Worse, I suppose, I am a cop, like it or not. I just want to be able to do my job.”

Batiste ran down the day’s improvements.

“Yeah, I heard. That’s great, but it’s like a Band-Aid.”

“Come on. It’s not all that bad here. It’s just bureaucracy, and that’s everywhere. You think L.A. will be better? It’s so much bigger, it’s got to be worse.”

“I can’t see the chief in L.A. pulling lab time over homicides ’cause some guys do a bullshit prank.”

“Chicken shit,” Frank corrected him, and Abe had to smile. “There’s rot from the top, Frank, and I’m not sure it’s just bureaucracy.”

“What it is, is over.” Batiste got up from behind his desk, went and opened the door. “Forget the past week and look out there. Business as usual.”

Abe half turned to look. “It’s like your wife has an affair that’s ended and you’re supposed to pretend it didn’t happen?”

“Sometimes, maybe, yeah.” He closed the door all the way. “But you didn’t come in here to ask for a reference. I mean, you were already in on something else.”

“You ought to be an investigator, Frank. Figuring out shit like that.”

Batiste was back in his seat behind the desk. He unwrapped a hard candy from his top drawer and popped it into his mouth. “So you were working.” Said with satisfaction.

“Rusty Ingraham.” Glitsky grimaced. “I’m sounding like Hardy, but Maxine Weir…”

“Yeah? We got the perp on that, don’t we?”

“An arrest has been made, right.”

“But?”

“Tying things up. Different angles keep popping out.”

He told Batiste about his talk with Johnny LaGuardia, the fact that it looked like a professional had done the hit on Maxine, which could include Medina or LaGuardia himself, but seemed to rule out the husband.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Batiste raised a hand. “This is all very interesting, but what about the alleged perp, what’s his name?”

“Baker.”

“Baker. What about Baker? He’d pick up the Armor All trick in the joint, don’t you think?”

Glitsky thought on it. “Maybe so. But the problem is also in my guts. The problem is Rusty Ingraham’s missing body, the husband’s lousy alibi, except why would he know about Armor All? And today-am I wrong-we find our own Hector Medina going pro-active on another violent crime. What’s going on?”

Batiste moved the candy around, making a sucking noise.

“You want my take, it really sounds to me like you got the right guy. Shit, Abe, there’s always some loose ends.”

“This is not just loose ends, Frank,” Abe said. “This is a hair ball.”

Louis Baker wasn’t going back in.

They had him now. He’d thought he could pull it off, but then with the shooting, there was no way. That alone, forget the other, the stuff Ingraham and Hardy were talking about, would put him back. He wasn’t going.

He wasn’t putting up with the game of another trial. Everything stacked against him anyway from day one. And this time, what Hardy had said, going for the gas chamber.

No way.

The hospital room was dark. There was dim light out through the open door into the hallway, where he knew the guard sat.

He was quietly working the sheet back and forth over a jutting bit of metal that protruded from the bars at the side of the bed. A nurse walked by, exchanged a few words with the guard. He saw her silhouette in the doorway and lay still.

Then she was gone. He waited a minute, listening. The chair in the hall creaked, the guard probably settling back.

He got a tear in the top of the sheet and, trying not to move anything but his hands, began ripping a strip down to the bottom.

He only needed three strips. He wanted to get each one started at the top-that was the hardest part, the first tear -so he went back to the little bit of metal, working the old hospital sheet over it again and again, until, again, he got it to tear.

He pulled the new strip down a ways, using only the strength of his hands, showing no movement outside the covers, got maybe ten inches, then started over again at the top.

You only needed three strips to braid.

You braided the three eight-foot strips of sheet into a rope maybe seven feet long. You made a noose in that rope and tied one end to the same metal bar you were using to make the tear. You put the noose around your neck and rolled off the other side of the bed.

He wasn’t going back in.